Archive for the ‘Enlightenment’ Category

Epoch Times — Evan Mantyk reports:For your education, enjoyment, and (perhaps) excitement, this is a list of the greatest poems originally written in the English language. It is presented from least greatest (10) to greatest greatest (1) and each poem is followed by a brief analysis of each poem.

The poems in the list were selected by the Society of Classical Poets to inspire and educate new poets, but can also inspire and educate all people with their timeless wisdom and universal themes.

Many good poems and poets had to be left out of this list because of the list’s necessary shortness (a mere 10 among many thousands) as well as the Society’s emphasis on classical poetry.

What is classical poetry? It means poems that follow perennial forms, like meter and rhyme, and that are infused with a classical flavor—that is, with humanity’s quintessential quest for virtue over vice, epic over ephemeral, and beauty over baseness.

Additionally, I note that long poems, such as epics and plays, and excerpts of such works have not been considered for this list. (01/23/2016)

.

10. ‘The Road Not Taken’

By Robert Frost (1874–1963)

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Future Positive — Timothy Wilken writes: In his sermon on the mount, Jesus of Nazareth taught:

“Love our enemies, do good to them that hate us, bless them that curse us, and pray for them that despitefully use us, I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgement. Go be reconciled with thy brother.”

Jesus of Nazareth may have been the first human to embrace synergy. His words seem to capture the very essence of synergic morality.

Synergic morality is more than not hurting other, it requires helping other. Jesus was the first human to state the fundamental law of synergic relationship. It is known as the Golden Rule: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law.”

What would you have others do to you? The best one word answer I can find for this question is help. “Help others as you would have them help you.”

Whether you believe Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ foretold in the Old testament, or just a man, his words bring wisdom to all humanity. (12/26/2015)

The Huffington Post — Stephen Cope writes: Here is a question I’d like you to ponder: Do you have a clear sense of your purpose in life?

I’m asking all of my friends this question these days. I guess I’m preoccupied with this question because I’m going through a phase — at midlife — of wondering about my own life.

I pose the question in a variety of ways. Perhaps I’ll ask: “What is it you are Up To — capital U, capital T?” Or, “Is your life driven by some intentionality — some deep meaning and purpose?” And then, of course, the all-important follow-up question: “Do you think this purpose is being fulfilled?”

You’d be surprised at the answers I get. Many of us, it seems, are a little vague about what it is we are Up To. Or even utterly confused.

Okay, I’m obsessed with finding the answer to this question. Perhaps this is because I am currently directing something called the Kripalu Institute for Extraordinary Living (IEL). I mean, really: If I’m going to direct an institute with such a name, perhaps I should be living an extraordinary life. What if people found out that my life is as ordinary as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

Can we look a little deeper? What, really, is an extraordinary life? And how does it differ from an ordinary one? After looking closely at these questions for a couple of years with my colleagues here at the IEL, I am more confused than ever. I’ve been struck by the ordinariness of most of the so-called extraordinary lives we’ve studied. And the closer we look at “ordinary lives,” well, the more extraordinary they appear. It’s tough being a human being — and I’m impressed by the courage I see in every single life I encounter.

But I persist: What about extraordinary living? Full living? I think that the yoga tradition can help us understand the possibilities. There is one piece of yogic lore in particular that I find very helpful. Yogis believed that every human being is born with a special gift. This gift, for each of us, is the doorway to a fulfilled life. It is the doorway to our own particular path, our vocation, our calling — our sacred duty. Yogis called this vocation our dharma. All of life is seen as an opportunity to realize and manifest this unique calling — this unique dharma.

Early yogis had a beautiful way of thinking about the importance of the gift. For these yogis, the whole world was seen as a vast net woven together in space and time — not unlike our notion of the quantum field. This was called Indra’s Net, and at the intersection of each warp strand and woof strand of this net is a jewel that represents an individual human soul. And it is that soul’s duty — sacred calling — to hold together its particular part of the web by being its own unique jewel-like self. In this way, the whole universe holds together as one great interlocking field, but only if each one of us plays our particular role, enacts our unique dharma. (12/26/2015)

The Daily Good— Robert Enright writes: When another person hurts us, it can upend our lives.

Sometimes the hurt is very deep, such as when a spouse or a parent betrays our trust, or when we are victims of crime, or when we’ve been harshly bullied. Anyone who has suffered a grievous hurt knows that when our inner world is badly disrupted, it’s difficult to concentrate on anything other than our turmoil or pain. When we hold on to hurt, we are emotionally and cognitively hobbled, and our relationships suffer.

Forgiveness is strong medicine for this. When life hits us hard, there is nothing as effective as forgiveness for healing deep wounds. I would not have spent the last 30 years of my life studying forgiveness if I were not convinced of this.

Many people have misconceptions about what forgiveness really means—and they may eschew it. Others may want to forgive, but wonder whether or not they truly can. Forgiveness does not necessarily come easily; but it is possible for many of us to achieve, if we have the right tools and are willing to put in the effort.

Below is an outline of the basic steps involved in following a path of forgiveness, adapted from my new book, 8 Keys to Forgiveness. As you read through these steps, think about how you might adapt them to your own life. (12/26/2015)

Future Positive— Geoff Oslen writes: Albert Einstein once said the most important question a human being can ask is “Is the universe friendly?”

Think of that for a moment. How would you answer? If you think the universe is truly friendly and supportive of you, this obviously has a huge effect on your perceptions and behaviour. The same applies if you think cosmos is hostile – or just indifferent to your fate.

On a first reading, Einstein’s question is trivially true. If you’ve decided, consciously or unconsciously, that the universe is friendly, your positive outlook is likely to be mirrored by positive responses from others, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about your world being fundamentally good. You are likely to have more friends, job offers, etc. Conversely, if you are suspicious by nature, or walk around with a cloud over your head, you’re not likely to be much fun at parties, although you may win nodding approval from fellow grumps. At the very least your life is likely to seem a series of disappointments. This is pretty self-evident stuff. From Ralph Waldo Emerson to Dale Carnegie to Wayne Dyer, most of us have heard the drill: life is what you make it.

But if it’s Einstein talking, there’s a good chance there’s more to it than this. Spend a bit of time on it, and you realize the question’s depth. This goes far beyond the soothing homilies about high self-esteem, or the pieties of religious dogmatism. This is about whether universe is friendly (unifiable, consoling) or unfriendly (neutral, fragmented, hostile, “other”). From the choice you make, you can extrapolate the direction of subsequent life decisions. Your state of being could evolve from the answer to that one all-important question. But bear with me; because it’s a big topic and this essay is all over the map, from childhood psychology to the pest problems of a Hollywood star author, to the paradoxes of cosmology and quantum physics, to the “angel” in the library.

The choice to believe in a friendly or unfriendly universe undoubtedly begins in our early years. It may well be that people who are preternaturally content, seemingly at peace with themselves and the world, were introduced to “a friendly universe” through proper nurturing as infants. Their early experiences became the foundation for their psychic life. The results of less desirable childhood beginnings are also obvious. If a child suffers a traumatic birth, and/or their parents abuse their natural trust, that individual may grow up extrapolating their experience to the whole of existence, always suspecting the worst and failing to trust in others.

Rev. Gerard Pantin is the founder of Service Volunteered for All (SERVOL) in Trinidad and Tobago. In a speech he gave in 2000, he noted how the Yequana Indians of Brazil make sure that their babies are in physical contact with the skin of another human being 24 hours a day for the first two years. “These children grow up without that emptiness that we modern people spend our lives trying to heal or cope with. A lot of our modern preoccupation with ‘feeling good’ through sex and drugs dates back to the fact that the way in which we were brought up didn’t give us the opportunity of feeling good about our infant bodies.”

Citing Einstein’s famous line, Pantin adds that “Yequana children, because of close bodily contact, not only see the universe as friendly but feel it to be loving.” Beginning with a bodily, visceral sense of an all-embracing love, the Yequena don’t intellectualize over whether the universe is friendly or not; they carry within themselves the felt conviction that they are loved beings. (09/02/2013)

Future Positive — Timothy Wilken, a physician and synergic scientist, will be teaching at the Pacific Coast Church, 522 Central Avenue, Pacific Grove, CA 93950 this coming Saturday, August 17th at 1:00 to 4:00 PM. This will be the 9th Class in the Spirituality for a New World series.

In the first part of his class, Dr. Wilken will be discussing the Fifth Force in the Universe. There are 4 Physical Forces found in Universe: Gravity, Electromagnetism, and the two nuclear forces: the Strong and the Weak.

The Fifth Force is a metaphysical force. Since it cannot be weighted and measured, our materialistic scientists do not know it exists. But, it not only exists, it is the most powerful force in living universe. Like electromagnetism, the Fifth Force has both a positive and negative pole.

The positive pole is: LOVE: The Pull to Union. We seek to unite with that which we consider Good.

The negative pole is: FEAR: The Push to Separation. We seek to separate from that which we consider Bad.

Dr. Wilken will explain how this 5th Force influences nearly every action and decision that we make in our lifetimes.

In the second part of his class, Dr. Wilken will be discussing: Enlightened CommUnity

Enlightened can be defined as: One who is a awake to the truth of oneness — There is only one of us here — Shiva Hum — Or as, Carol Carnes might say, “One who has moved from twoness to oneness (from separateness to oneness).”

CommUnity can be defined as: A group of individuals who choose to solve their problems by working together rather than by working separately. As Henry Ford once said, “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

Individuals within a CommUnity: operate together as in co-operation, labor together as in co-laboration, act together as in co-action, create together as in co-creation, and think together as in co-intelligence.

They choose togetherness and thus insure that the whole commUnity will be much more than the sum of its individual parts. As Thich Nhat Hanh said, “The next Buddha will be a Sangha.”

Dr. Wilken will show how the creation of Enlightened CommUnity can allow us to create Heaven on Earth — A world without FEAR — A world where there is only LOVE—A World filled with Goodness.

A world where the only rule is: Be Love, Do Good and you will Have Everything.

***

So please join Dr. Wilken on Saturday, August 17, 2013 at 1:00 to 4:00 PM in the PCC Community Room. You can reserve a space in the class for just $20 at the PCCMind Shop, 522 Central Avenue, Pacific Grove, CA 93950 or call (831-372-2971). Admission is available at the door, but it would be very helpful for us to know how many will be attending. (08/12/2013)

Awakening Your Unique Self — Marc Gafni writes: My new book Your Unique Self which came out recently, represents 30 years of teaching, and you could say is the culmination of my life’s work to date in this area. It has been a delight and blessing to hear so much gratitude and appreciation from people who’ve read it.

The teaching of Unique Self is so fundamental to our world right now I’ve been working hard to weave it’s principles into a course that will allow anyone to experience the power of it.

And I want you to come and study with me on it.So, to give you a flavor of what’s available I’ve put together a free mini-course. It’s a great way to take a quick, yet deep dive into the Unique Self teaching. All you need is an email address to sign up.

Our full 10-week course which starts this week on April 24th is not merely information, it is a tested wisdom process honed over the last two decades. It is a direct and guided transmission of the love, insight, and practice which is necessary to Awaken into and as Your Unique Self. This course provides the process and community to help you realize the next stage of your life and make dreams long forgotten, or dreams you never dared to dream, become a genuine possibility in your life. Life is inviting you right now — if you are moved and audacious — to take a unique risk and sign up as a dramatic and tender act of self love. Love, as we will learn in the course, is a Unique Self perception. Self love begins with the first glimmer of perception of Your Evolutionary Unique Self in its radiant and actualized possibility.

I want to invite you, encourage you, urge you with all my heart to join me for this course.

* * *

Timothy Wilken, MD writes: I am very impressed with Marc Gafni. The breadth of his knowledge is staggering. He is a master teacher. He has been studying Hebrew Mysticism and seeking Enlightenment for 30 years.

I first became aware of Gafni in early 2008. He had resumed teaching here in America, and his work was highly recommended to me by someone I greatly respected. I had the privilege of actually hearing him speak at a local church in the Monterey area, and decided that I needed to examine his work more carefully. In past four years, I have read two of his books, Soul Prints and The Mystery of Love, both which impressed me.

I then obtained and listened to recordings of his Soul Prints Workshop recorded in 2004 and to The EROTIC and the HOLY Workshop recorded in 2006. I found them both so compelling, I have listened to the 15 hours of recordings many times. I also signed up and paid for a number of his online courses , and found them all of great value. I am currently reading his latest book Your Unique Self . I can’t recommend his teachings too strongly. (04/22/2013)